Daily Lessons from Life 12 February 2018 - To learn fr Israel?

"Israel awards top literature prize to novelist critical of its policies

JERUSALEM: Israel's national prize for literature, one of its most prestigious honours, is to be awarded this year to novelist David Grossman, an outspoken critic of Israel's policy towards the Palestinians.

Grossman, 64, has expressed support for Israeli conscientious objectors, creation of a Palestinian state and the need to avoid war with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Announcing the award on Monday, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, an ultra-nationalist, described the Jerusalem-born novelist as "one of the most exciting profound and influential voices in Israeli literature."

Grossman, who won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for fiction, will receive the Israel Prize on Independence Day in April, Bennett said, describing the decision as a move towards reconciliation in a country with deep divides over matters of war and peace.

"I disagree with the author, David Grossman, politically," Bennett said in public remarks to members of his Jewish Home party.

"But he's not an author of the left wing and I am not education minister of the right wing. I am education minister for all the State of Israel ... the time has come to heal the rifts," Bennett said."

Interesting development. Most be very tough for the politically diversed Education Minister to say what he just said!

Should political differences split the people of a nation? It should not is the ideal answer yet it will take tremendous efforts to make it a reality! As the case here. Perhaps "the time has come to heal the rifts" as pronounced by the award "giver" representative!

In our part of the world, would this ever happened? The controversy of film makers unable to screen pseudo documentary abt the lives of ex-political exiles in Sgp in the past stirred some heated debates abt if the government has been too paranoid. 

Maybe the time is not ripe yet. Maybe in the near future, the mainstream cultural calendar n scene can hv talents of diversed political persuasion showcased their works with causing disunity of a people? Or the fear of causing disunity?